Fireworks

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This year, the end of October has been really noisy. The reason? Fireworks! Now, the traditional time for fireworks in England is on November 5th – Guy Fawkes night. I shall tell you more about Guy Fawkes in another podcast. But in recent years, many English people – particularly children, of course – have adopted the American custom of celebrating Halloween, which is the 31st October. So we have fireworks at Halloween as well as on Guy Fawkes night. And last week was Eid, the great Muslim festival at the end of Ramadam, so our Muslim neighbours had fireworks in their garden. And a few days before that was Diwali, the Hindu and Sikh festival of light – and that needed fireworks too. So for about three weeks here in Birmingham, every evening is filled with the whoosh of rockets and the bangs, crackles, fizzes and pops of other fireworks. Look at these words – bang, crackle, fizz, pop. They sound like the sounds which they describe. We have a technical name for words which sound like the thing they describe – onomatopaeia. It comes from Greek and means, literally, “word-making”. The sound makes the word that we use to describe it. Do you remember the podcast about the old English song, Sumer is Icumen in? There was a bird that sings loudly in the early summer – the cuckoo. The word cuckoo is onomatopaeic, because it comes from the sound the cuckoo makes. Here are some other onomatopoeic words, words which sound like the thing they describe:buzz woof croak cluck thud crash hum

And finally, a game – yes, table tennis, or as we often call it, ping-pong.